A week or two ago Software Update updated my system to Mac OS X 10.4.8 and while at first everything seemed to be OK, I started noticing some wierd behavior.

My mouse pointer would never turn into the pointy-finger when I moused over a link in Safari. I could still click the links, but sometimes it was hard to figure out what was a link, and what wasn't. Also, the status bar in Safari would not show any link locations. I often hover over a link location and look at the status bar to see where the link will lead. After the update, I couldn't do that anymore.

The menus in the Finder lost their flexy-stickyness-- that is, if I clicked on a menu name, the menu would drop down and stick, but when I moved my mouse to the next menu item, the first menu would stay stuck down, and the next menu would not open until I clicked it.

My screensaver hot corners stopped working. I would move my mouse to a hot corner, and no screensaver. I tried resetting the hot corners in the System Preferences, but no dice.

My machine would not stay asleep, instead deciding on its own when it should be awake. Not unlike my 5 year-old son used to do.

Today, I found a solution. I had seen a comment somewhere that using the full installer for 10.4.8 could solve these types of issues. So, I downloaded the 10.4.8 updater from the Apple Support site, mounted the disk image, and started the installer. After the system rebooted, my mouse was back to it's good old self. Whew.